This Cover Story originally appeared in Boardroom’s Summer Issue print magazine and has been adapted for online publication.
Don Toliver is tired. Exhausted, really. You can hear it in his voice, the way he sometimes inhales before breathlessly answering a question, like a kid getting through the last class of the day. You, too, would be cooked if you had to bounce back and forth from Houston to Los Angeles the way most people commute from Brooklyn to Midtown Manhattan. On this night, he’s in Houston. We’ve tried three times over the past week to land a time to talk in person. But due to the aforementioned travel schedule, the demands of fatherhood, and tour prep, we gave up and decided to connect on a video call.
It’s a Monday in late April, and the way he’s positioned in the Google Meet window, I can see him roughly from the forehead up in what appears to be a room with terrible lighting and worse acoustics. Within about 90 seconds of saying what up, he is talking at length about the front and rear suspension on a Porsche 911 Dakar. Then he’s talking about potholes on Richmond Avenue. Then, about the dirt road behind his house. And then about Group B rally racing in the 1980s, a subject I happen to know an unreasonable amount about. Within a few minutes of conversation, it becomes clear that he knows an unreasonable amount about it too and that the new album, Octane, which debuted at No. 1 and has been sitting near the top of the charts for months, was built on a foundation that included things his beloved Porsches and Audi Quattros at Pikes Peak. But it wasn’t all motorsport — he also cites the 100-inch Hooker telescope at Mount Wilson Observatory, Edwin Hubble’s discovery that the universe was substantially larger than anyone had previously believed. Oh, and the specific smell of E85 race fuel, which Toliver describes as peanut oil.
If you’re one of the many people who streamed his fifth album 138 million times during its first week of release, you probably know who Don Toliver is. You know he’s 31 years old and from the Westheimer-and-Highway-6 corridor of southwest Houston, and that he has been signed to Travis Scott’s Cactus Jack label since 2018, when he appeared on Astroworld’s “Can’t Say” and immediately made people tap in. His debut, Heaven or Hell, came in 2020, anchored by “After Party” and “No Idea,” and was nearly sidelined due to the COVID-19 pandemic. But his catalog since — Life of a Don, Love Sick, Hardstone Psycho — has put him on a steady upward arc most of his peers would trade their publishing for. His latest album continues that trajectory with seven songs (out of 18) in the top 40 on the Billboard Hot 100, including “E85” and “Rosary,” the latter of which features his label boss.
What he is, technically, is harder to pin down. He sings more than he raps. He doesn’t really write verses in the bar-by-bar sense most rap criticism is built around. His songs tend to operate as moods first and lyric vehicles second — a quality he himself describes, repeatedly and without apology, as “vibe.” This has not stopped him from being placed at the top of the hottest-rapper conversation. It has, if anything, made the convo more interesting.
Eventually, we stop talking about cars, and I ask him about that positioning. For the past few weeks, in the wake of Complex’s hottest-rapper list, many fans and podcast hosts have said that, actually, Don Toliver is the guy in the No. 1 spot. Not Drake, J. Cole, or Kendrick Lamar. Or even Travis Scott. He has not pushed back on this. Asked directly, in his Houston room, whether he agrees, he says yes — “1,000% right” — and that he is ready to “show people better than I can tell people.” He invokes Mike Tyson in the ’80s and does, in fact, all of the chest-beating that the claim traditionally requires. What he will not do, and what I tried to get him to do during our hour-long convo, is name another artist in relation to himself. Not to compare. Not to dismiss. Not even to acknowledge as competition. Pressed on who specifically he thinks he is better than, he reroutes. Pressed on the hierarchy he is now apparently sitting on top of, he reroutes. He will tell you, with real feeling, that he is in his prime. He will not tell you whose prime he has eclipsed to get there.
The claim of being the hottest in the game is not a new convention. And it almost always comes with comparative analysis. Toliver’s version of the claim has none of that. The easy read is that he’s being diplomatic. The more interesting read, and the one that started to feel right somewhere around the part where he was explaining how an astronomer waiting for Saturn to appear is the same job as a rapper waiting in the studio for the song that changes his life, is that he isn’t actually running in the race the rest of the field is running in. He has spent five albums building a lane — call it vibe, call it mood, whatever — that doesn’t compete with traditional rap craft on traditional rap terms. It runs adjacent. It runs at a different frequency. Octane, the album most explicitly about going somewhere fast, is also the album where it becomes hardest to say who, exactly, he is racing.
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Boardroom: Let’s start with cars. What’s going on with you and cars?
Don Toliver: Right now, I’m just going through what I have. I’m planning to take some vehicles on tour, so I’m trying to get that together. I probably take two vehicles on tour with me — two Porsches — and I’m just getting them together, getting everything right.
Are you a big Porsche guy? I saw you pulled up to the Billboard shoot in the new Dakar.
Yeah, I would say so. That car kind of inspired me a lot with the whole creative process of this album. So I like to keep it nearby, to be honest.
I read that the album was very heavily infused with your love of automotive, but also that that car in particular inspired it. How so, in your words?
I feel like I’ve always been a fan of [the] 911. It evolved over time, and it always grew on me, from seeing it [in] American Psycho all the way from, like, Bad Boys and so on and so forth. It’s always had, like, an iconic silhouette, and it’s just always been, like, a mystery to me. I always wanted to have the bread to be able to really explore between all, like, different kinds of car genres and see who does it the best. And over my time of just dealing with Porsche and driving those cars — like, no gas — they really just know how to do it. So, yeah, that really just sparked a lightbulb in my head and creativity.
And what really did it for me with the car is, you know, I love to go off-roading. Having a 911 that can go off-road, like when I got to go through my backyard. It’s like a long dirt road in Houston. It just gives me, like, a crazy feeling, just knowing, like, I can take this car anywhere in the world and be able to rip.
Then, another thing, too, is what’s really nostalgic about the Dakar is that Houston has the whole livery. It’s like a new, improved version of [what] they used back in the old days, like my mom’s and everything. And it looks really dope. But besides that, in Houston, it’s so many potholes and so many ditches. It has, like, a front and back lift suspension. The freedom of just me being able to drive as fast as I want — but not only that, I can be able to just, like, maneuver a pothole or hit a pothole and not feel bad about it. The streets on Richmond — I grew up between Richmond and Highway 6. It’s like my whole land strip. And on that Westheimer and on that Richmond, it just get crazy. Especially Richmond, the streets is cooked. Gessner Road’s cooked, like overly. So it’s just a crazy feeling, just to be able to ride, like, a supercar through any terrain and not feel nothing about it. I literally took it on ice and, like, really ripped it and, like, hit real ditches and ruts.
Are you familiar with Porsche’s history racing in rally?
Yeah, for sure. Le Mans and all of that. Them boys was competing with Audi, smoking them boys out. Audi came with that all-wheel-drive shit. Yeah, man. I’m really just a fan of that whole [Group] B.
Group B is my favorite thing. That’s what got me into racing.
But see, my whole thing — what started this album — what really, like, made me [feel] like, no, I can do this, was I looked at it as, like, OK, what makes this polarizing? And what made me want to do it in my own sense was like the superstar feeling of you being in a car hitting a corner, and there’s, like, fans in the street. My whole thing was, like, in 2026, if I bring all my fans to a rally meet, and it’s, like, fans can spectate, but just imagine if I had a million cameramen out there, and it’s like they all leaned over getting a shot. That was, like, my idea for an album cover — just that, me hitting the corner, you seeing me through the windshield, and there’s like a hundred cameramen leaned over into the street. There’s lights, camera, action. There’s literally fans taking pictures of you in the middle of the street. That was, like, my whole concept. That was the roots of this album.
And then it got into, like, OK, well, I got the action, I got the swag, the car shit will be cool with the spectators, and I can, like, be me. I love Group B. But what’s the architecture? I already did the desert shit. So I started to have to get creative. That’s what took me to Mount Wilson. That was, like, the whole architecture piece. I fell in love with the camper on top of the supercar shit. And then, like when you do these long marathons, you have to camp somewhere. So that was my touch-grass point. Like, OK, not everybody can relate to Group B rally racing or Porsches and Ferraris, but you can relate to touch grass.
Either way it goes, next step was just the science behind Mount Wilson, the observatory. The studies that Edwin Hubble discovered was catastrophic. He was the guy [at] that telescope. They found out there was more in the universe than just the universe. It was way past light-years. The 100-inch Hooker — they call it the 100-inch. And I just fell in love with the idea of, like, an astronomer sitting behind a telescope all day trying to find Jupiter, or waiting for Saturn to appear. Because that’s just how the music shit is. I’ll be in the studio, and I make five, six songs a day, and I’m waiting to see Jupiter. I’m waiting to see Pluto. Because at any given moment, you never know, like, what could happen, just making a quick song. Shit can change your life.
So I really resonated with that point. It’s just, like, me in the studio to 3 a.m. They in that observatory, the 5 in the morning ready to clock in. Coffee ready. So now, you got Group B rally racing, you got champion, you’ve got astronomy, and you just got beautiful architecture, all in one blend to create what Octane is. And Octane itself is just more fuel for your consumption. “E85” is the best representation of that — one of the highest forms of fuel was race fuel. Shit smells like peanut oil. I thought that was crazy.
It’s been out for a little while, and you’ve seen the reaction to it. It’s been beloved. Went No. 1. Sold really well. People have been touting it. How do you feel overall the reaction’s been? Are you happy with it?
I’m definitely happy with the reception. I’m still working, though. I love, and I appreciate everything that all my fans and my supporters have given me and done for me. I just want to keep contributing. I’m not getting nothing but older. So while we all here, I just want to have a good time. It just feels good to work as hard as I’ve been working. Honestly, it just feels good [for] people to just really receive my music in a great way.
It seems to have moved you up into the hierarchy of people in the game. A bunch of people have said you’re the hottest in the game right now. How do you respond to that?
I love it. Honestly, I love it. I am more than happy to be that guy. And I got music, I got talent, I got time. In this time where people are really listening to what I got going on and they saying I’m the hottest, I can show people better than I can tell people. But what I will say is, yes, they are 1,000% right. I’m coming crazy. I’m ready for whatever, man. I’m ready to just give it all to the music, because honestly, this all I’ve ever wanted.
When I was first doing this shit, I never really looked at what numbers could be. I promise you. I remember being at Barron Studios, and I was just telling myself — I was in the studio just singing a song, and I was just loving what I was hearing. I was just telling myself, like, it’s not about none of that. I just want people to hear me. I was like, yo, I just need to be heard. And I still feel that way. I love everything I got. I’m blessed beyond words. But more than anything, I always wanted to be heard. So now that people hear me and they saying I’m the one, I’m going to show you better than I can tell you, because I ain’t did it like I wanted to do it yet.
But Octane is beautiful. One thing I will say that I can vouch for with this album is that it’s real passion. You can feel it. You can hear it. And that is more than anything to me. You can say whatever you want on the track. You can be as witty as you want to be. You can rap about every car. But if you ain’t got no passion, I don’t feel it in my vein. When you hear my voice and what I’m talking about, in a sense, it might not all the way even resonate with your situation, but you feel that passion in my voice. And I think that’s all I’m trying to do for the rest of eternity, is just make sure if I’m getting on that microphone, you know he was in there giving it what it needed to be given. It’s all about the feeling.
Feeling something on the track is powerful. That’s why a lot of these guys who don’t be saying nothing get so far, because it’s just a feeling. Now, if they were really saying something, it would go farther than just wherever it went. And I think it’s kind of, like, prime momentum of me saying something and me intentionally coming with that passion, kind of all meeting each other at the table. And that’s kind of like the product you get with Octane.
When I think about Don Toliver music, a mood comes to mind more than anything else. I’m curious for you, who has been able to make so many hits and craft this lane for yourself — one, if you agree with that, and two, how would you describe that mood?
This is what I will say. To categorize that mood that you’re speaking of, I would just say that what kind of separates me from others sometimes is — well, not even others, because there’s other artists that is in that same frequency, but sometimes I just touch this frequency just a little bit different. I just think that if I had to say it, it’s just, like, I’m just, like, a vibe. Like, I’m talking about something. I’m coming with intention, but I’m a vibe. As an artist, you want to be a vibe more than anything.
It’s cool to be that artist that’s going to come and rap about everything they ever did in the trap. It’s cool to be that artist to come on the song and, like, talk about everything they done spilled or whatever. I just think that in this day and age, people want to have a good time. When homies step out together, they want to have a good time. When the girls get together and they go out, they want to have a good time. That’s a vibe. I want to cater to that vibe. And I think that’s all I’ve been ever trying to do since I came with Heaven or Hell, is just be that vibe.
“After Party,” that’s a vibe. “No Idea” — that’s a vibe. Life of a Don. “Swangin’ on Westheimer” — that’s a vibe. “Love Sickness.” “No Pole.” “Hardstone National Anthem,” “Tore Up,” “Bandit,” “Kryptonite” — I’m coming with energy that’s gonna give you energy. Something provocative, for real provocative. Something that’s like, Oh, damn, this shit sound kind of crazy. It’s taking me somewhere. And that’s a vibe.
As an artist, I tell any artist, you just want to be a vibe. The vibe is you curating. You’re there to set tone. You’re there to bring ambiance to the table. People listening, they playing your music, nine times out of 10, it’s some type of action going on. Like if you working out, you in your house, you having a slight conversation, you want a vibe going. Be a vibe. Everything ain’t got to be so woo-woo. That’s the one thing I just felt when I was creating this album. I just wanted to be a vibe for everybody, and, like, something that you always just revert back to in this day and age, like — nah, this is a vibe. This set the tone. That’s the moment.
As you continue to make more and build more, I’m curious your take on the future of music — specifically how you see the use of AI in music. I see a lot of people sound [like] AI.
I don’t see none of that. Honestly, AI is like another PlayStation, another goddamn Nintendo 64. People going to have fun with it and try to create, re-create, build live stories behind it. But once I’m gone, I’m gone. There’s only one Don Toliver. I love robots. I think it’s fun. It’s cool. That’s where the future is going. We can’t stop it. But yeah, I’m one step ahead of AI. The AI didn’t have this musical download until I gave it to them. They didn’t know nothing about Octane. That was my favorite thing to say when I was making this album. I was like, yo, I am one step ahead of the machine right now. So I think it’s funny. I’m one step ahead of the game. I’m raging against the machine. You waiting on my update.
You posted recently on your IG that you were ready to come out of retirement. You just released the No. 1 album. You’re about to go on tour. What were you talking about?
Honestly, if you were here in person, I can play some music right now [that would] be, like, blow your mind and have you, like, damn! You wouldn’t really expect to hear what I have next this early. I’m only five months out of my last album. But like I said, I have to create the music because I have real life. I have to capture the moment. When I think about it, I need to record it. And sometimes that makes the most insane music. I’m just gearing up. I’m ready for whatever. If it had to come down to it, however it got to go down to, if they made me drop, if I had to — if the world [is] screaming, if I can get everybody on TikTok, everybody on Instagram, everybody on Twitter to scream “Don, drop another” — to dare me to do it, I need everybody to geek me up.
And listen, I’m not beating on my chest and saying it’s going to be good. I’m not saying it’s going to be bad, but I do feel in my heart that I got some music to give. I ain’t going to say I’m coming out with the best. But what I will say is I got something I would like you to hear. And if it’s good, hey, take it and do what you will with it. I got some good stuff that I would love to share with the world. But in my life, I’m the one creating the music. I have to say, I have more music. I’m not going to sit here and tell you I’m taking a vacation and I’m sitting down for a year. No, I have to be honest. I have music.
You’re already ready?
Oh, yeah. I’m ready to go crazy. If they told me — if my life depended on it, I’m going crazy all over again. I would damn near call this one Nitrous. You got Octane on that last one. You going to get that Nitrous. But it’s cool, man. I’m having fun. I’m just making music. That’s what I love to do.
This is your prime. You feel you’re the best.
I don’t know about this [being] my prime, but I feel good. I feel like Mike Tyson in the ’80s. No cap. I’m good.
So it makes sense then when people say Don Toliver is the hottest in the game. You’re like, “Yeah, and I can keep going.“
I can keep going. I can give you a whole movie right now if you let me. I would urge anybody to want to be the best.
Interviewer – Damien Scott
VP, General Manager – Paul Beckles
VP, Content – Damien Scott
VP, Revenue & Brand Partnerships – Abigale Smith
VP, Partnership Strategy & Marketing – Bernadette Doykos
Art Director – Michelle Lukianovich
DP, Sr. Producer, Video Editor – Craig Newton
Director, Producer – Audrey Blackmore
Camera Op – Emmanuel Ramos
VP, Social Media – Yoni Mernick
VP, Audience Development – Jonathan Wiener
Sr. Manager, Content Operations – Griffin Adams
Sr. Director, Marketing & Content Operations – Stephanie Talmadge
CMO – Sarah Flynn
Co-Founders – Rich Kleiman & Kevin Durant
Photographer – Alexis Belhumeur
Photo Assistant – Justin Officer
Photo Assistant – Alex De La Hidalga
Executive Producer – Asmir Pervanić
Production Designer – Vera Jigalova
Digitech – DJ Dohar
Stylist – Bailey Rose Quinones
Styling Assistant – Diana Patricia
Styling Assistant – Sam Santos
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